Attention Mashable: A Rat in the House Might Eat Turnips in Church

Nothing says internet freedom like getting away with it, and that disruptive spirit was front and center at Mashable today. Yes, the strong team of fact checkers at Mashable allowed this story to go out under their brand: Never Mind the [1,100] Lawyers, GoldieBlox Won Big in the Beastie Boys Fight. We’ll get to commenting next week about the absolutely corrupt mentality behind that headline, but first I want to focus on the crux of the story:

…GoldieBlox appears to have benefited from using the [Beastie Boys’] song [“Girls”] without permission. Before the company pulled the first version of the ad, it had racked up 9 million views. While it’s hard to say what the value is of such a viral video, a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on ad revenues from the song Gangnam Style (about $1.7 million for 1 billion views) reveals that the figure is around $156,000.